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> >A thinking man's deco line? Think about this: Use a live boat and >dive with sufficient surface support. Shoot a bag and deco under that, >while your surface support follows you. Yup. I'll be hapy to ask the charter boat to fuck-off and ignore the other 20 guys that have paid to dive that day so they can follow me while I deco. Or maybe I'll recieve a grant from the Make-A-Wish foundation that will allow me to charter my own private boat and crew so I can live-boat. Get friggin real. >I am a strong opponent of souvenir hunting, but do not wish to argue >further on that point. From the perspective of having to carry mission >specific tools for a given objective, I prefer to stow these items in a >horizontal orientation, clipped off to the rear crotch d-ring and held >tight to the bottom of the backplate by surgical tubing loops. >Anything that is too large, and by that I mean anything that presents >an entrapment hazard or that noticeably affects my drag in the water, >or that is simply too heavy, goes in a separate tool bin supported by >its own lift bag. I'd like to see you come out and demonstrate doing that with any measure of success on a deep NE wreck. It's patently obvious that you have never done this sort of diving. Your first sentence says it all: You don't -do- what I do, but you feel it's OK to challenge our technique even though you have never tried it. For tools: 4 pound sledge hammer with welded 2 inch diameter D ring on top. This attached to a 6 pound curved hip weight by truck-tire inner tube band, attached this way it does not hang below the plane of the divers belly when swimming. I can swim -4 inches- over the bottom and nothing drags on the bottom rigged this way. Once detached for use, the hammer is re-clipped to a dogsnap on the backplate, since it's near impossible to reattach it to the weight since working rubber bands with mitts on is nearly impossible. Crowbar: This resides attached to left side of doubles with rubber truck tire bands, hook at top and hook turned backward to reduce snagging hazard. A small D ring is also welded to the bar, so it can go up on a lift-bag once removed and used to detach artifacts. The above two items are considered part of my weighting system. They add zero total weight to my rig, and are there 100% of the time. Added utility, zero penalty. See? You can have your cake and eat it too. Goodie Bag: Attached to light along with 'working knife' and backup light. This system allows the diver to 'slat-off' the light and all entangling goodie bag items, etc., should he need to bail from an entanglement. I do not use a canister light in the NE, as the wire (unless fitted with a quick-pull connector) poses an unacceptable hazard for anchor-line wrap during a bailout. The 'working knife' on the light allows access to a knife that is 'close at hand' but tis of course is a disposable system and there are two other knives elsewhere: One on forearm, and one on inner thigh. These are small commercial fishing knives and are 'razor' sharp. Of course all of this is going to go out the window in a few weeks as I put my Mark 15 rebreather into 'The loop". The things is just too small to bungie a crowbar onto the side, and I'm going to be carrying side-mounts of bailout gas where I normally would carry tools. Cave-diving? Nope. Wrreck diving? Yup. Universal technique? It is anywhere serious wreck diving is practiced. PS: we -need- more guys that don't believe in artifact hunting up here. it's that more for the rest of us "Wreck Rapers".... Want to know some stuff about the safe and legal use of explosives? Now -thats- technical diving. Been there, done that. Seriously, when I serve dinner at my house the first thing the guests notice is that the china des not match. It's because it's been collected from about a dozen wrecks over the last 25 years. Dave Sutton -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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